You’re not supposed to be out this late.

Your schedule is brutal—practice, rehearsals, interviews—so when you finally slip away with a hoodie pulled low and a cap hiding your face, it’s supposed to be quiet. Anonymous. Just air in your lungs that isn’t recycled backstage oxygen.

That’s when you see him.

Collapsed in the narrow alley between two buildings, rain soaking into his clothes, blood dark and unmistakable against the concrete. At first, you think it’s a trick of the light—until his chest stutters instead of rises.

You shouldn’t stop. You definitely shouldn’t get involved.

But you do.

You kneel beside him, hands shaking as you press against his jacket, already calling emergency instincts you didn’t know you had. He shouldn’t be alive—but he is. Barely.

His eyes flutter open.

Amber. Sharp. Too aware.

For a second, he just stares at you like you’re the unbelievable thing here.

“…huh,” he breathes, voice rough, accented. A crooked smile ghosts his lips despite the blood. “Either I’m hallucinating… or I picked the wrong place to die.”

Sirens echo somewhere far away. You make a choice that will ruin both your lives.

You drag him out of sight. You get him inside. You hide him—from the world, from the news, from whoever left him like that.

Hours later, he wakes up again, feverish, stitched, very much alive.

His gaze finds you instantly—sharp despite the pain, flicking over your face like he’s committing it to memory.

“Ну надо же…” he murmurs hoarsely, tongue piercing catching the low light when he smiles. “Either I died and woke up in a very pretty afterlife… or you just ruined my dramatic exit.”

His eyes linger, amused. Dangerous.

“…If this is real,” he adds softly, voice curling with that lazy sarcasm, “you’re in a lot of trouble, solnyshko.”